


crash and burn

by llwydion



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (it's temporary but still it's there), CW: Suicide, Groundhog Day AU, Langst, M/M, What Have I Done, heed the archive warnings, somewhere in season 3? before shiro's return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-08-29 18:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16749172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llwydion/pseuds/llwydion
Summary: “Beat that, Mullet! I fixed Red’s transistors, and now I just need to get the memristors replaced.”“Ugh, shut up Lance, just let me sleep for five more minutes.”Lance laughs quietly as he hears Keith’s breathing even out again. He snores a little in his sleep. It’s quite cute, once you get around the anger and the spikes, he thinks.Then his brain shorts out, just a little bit. Cute?! Did he just call Keith Kogane cute?Lance crash-lands on a planet with only Keith's voice in his ear to keep him company.





	1. twilight

**Author's Note:**

> i  
> im sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fall and its aftermath.

**i. the fall**

Let it be known that Lance McClain, pilot of the Red Lion, intergalactic Casanova who charms both men and women wherever he goes, hates crash landings. They sucked back when he had to pilot Blue, who was the best girl in the universe (and here Red gives a little growl in the back of his mind, but “easy, easy, Red, you’re still a good lion, the best boy, Blue’s my girl but you’re my man”), and it’s no better in Red. Because even though Red is built to be more agile and easily maneuvered, he also has less bulk to reduce the impact.

He remembers a little bit of the fight that brought him down. Something about protecting a desert planet, and the inhabitants were little friendly cat-like creatures, and then the Galra warships showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket in the blink of an eye. The Galra had some weird new tech, based on their ion cannon technology but somehow better? Pidge had been going on and on about them before they aimed at Lance and shot him down and Black shoved him away from the worst of it but he still got hit. He remembers the sheer panic (“Red’s dead in the water, it’s like their tech just disabled him!”) and the moment where gravity swooped low in his stomach and plucked him out of the air (“I’m falling, guys, can someone help?” “I can’t break free, there’s too many of them!” “Hold on just a little longer, Lance, Keith’s coming for you.”) and someone else… also getting hit? Some muffled yelling, some distant explosions, and the vibrations that occur with atmospheric re-entry.

The memories go fuzzy there. He probably passed out from the high g-forces acting on Red during that fall.

He takes stock of his surroundings. The panels are up and something is beeping, which means Red is working again, but something is wrong – there’s no atmospheric reading showing up, and Red can’t seem to fly. Something about a circuit and a bunch of blown transistors and memristors, but he’s no engineering expert and he doesn’t know where the tools to fix Red are stashed.

Nothing feels broken to him, though he has bruises all over and the side of his head hurts where it’s hit his helmet, but he doesn’t dare take it off to check just yet. Red can’t tell him if the hull’s been breached, and he doesn’t know if the air in here is breathable.

There’s a part of his brain that is screaming at him to get rescued ASAP, so he opens a comms line and hopes.

“Keith? Pidge? Hunk? Can anyone hear me? Guys?”

There is nothing but static.

He sighs, firmly boxes up the part of his mind that is going into panic mode, and shoves it into the back where it can hide with all the other dusty boxes there. There’s no time for panic now, not when he’s stranded on a strange planet with no way to contact his team.

He keeps the line open though, and as he searches through Red’s emergency supplies (and silently thanks Keith for his foresight in stocking Red with all the things he’ll need for at least a few weeks.

 

**ii.** **survival of the fittest**

The planet he’s landed on looks to be uninhabited by anyone. It’s desolate and harsh, a world of glass and silica sand, all white dunes and black edges and razor-sharp gleaming glass crystals growing out of the ground in large, towering formations that catch the blue-white sunlight form the binary star system up above. It’s beautiful in a wild, terrifying way, and Lance is strongly reminded of Keith for just a moment.

The line is open, but there’s still nothing but static.

Lance has been on this planet for three sunrises now, and he’s made very little progress. Red has helpfully nudged him towards a toolbox half-hidden under a box of rations, and when he opens it there’s a bunch of little probably-rubber-handled screwdrivers and wrenches and hammers. There’s also a handy booklet – but it’s written in the Altean script he’s never had the time to learn, since, hello, there’s an all-out war with Zarkon going on?

Sometimes he wishes he had Pidge’s understanding of technology, or Hunk’s mechanical skills, or even Keith’s instinctual understanding of his lion.

There’s a crackle in his ear, and he startles from where he’s been lounging in the pilot seat.

“Hello?”

The static is slowly but surely clearing, and Lance begins to make out a voice.

“- one there? – ith, pilot – Black.”

“You’ve gotta speak up, I can’t hear you well.”

There’s a pause. “-argo pilot?”

There’s only one person in the universe who will ever call him cargo pilot, and his name begins with a “K” and ends with a “eith Kogane”.

“Mullet-head?”

He tweaks a dial on his helmet, and the static clears.

“What is going on?” Keith’s slurring a little, which is unlike him.

“Did you hit your head?”

Apparently Keith decides that yes, it would be a great idea to go _poke his head_ just to see if he did hit it, judging by the hiss of pain he hears.

“Ow, yea, I think I did.”

“Are you ok?”

“I’m alright. It’s still bleeding a little, but not much anymore.”

“Okay then. Where are you? Are the others there? Please tell me you’ve got some way out of here.”

“One question at a time, god. You’re so impatient.”

“Did you just roll your eyes at me? You did, didn’t you?”

“Shut up, Lance. And to answer your question, no, I haven’t heard from the others.”

“Okay, fine, but seriously, where are you?”

“Black’s telling me I’m on one of the moons? I think? Oh, I can see you. You’re on the planet itself.”

“Aw, great. So even when we crash, I end up stuck with you in the same system? What cruel, cruel fate.”

Keith just clicks his tongue, and the silence stretches on. Just as Lance is starting to head back to work, he remembers something.

“How’s Black? Can you fly?”

A moment passes before Keith responds. “I don’t think so. Earlier, Black got hit by that new energy weapon, and he can’t fly. Something about the flight circuits getting messed up? I can’t tell, he’s low on power right now. How’s Red?”

“Same. Something shorted, and I need to get in there and fix things.”

“Oh no, poor Lance, having to fix things with your own hands? Whatever will you do?”

“Hey, at least I got through the Garrison’s engineering classes, Mr. Drop-out.”

Keith laughs, but there’s something wrong.

“Dude, are you sure you’re alright? You’re not hurt, beside your head?”

Another moment that stretches just a little too long to be a natural pause.

“Actually, my leg’s pinned. I’ll try to work around the debris, but no guarantees.”

“Three days to fix Blue then, okay, I can work with that.”

“I’m – I’m going to turn off comms for now, okay? I need to pull myself out.”

Months of Voltron and injuries has taught Lance that Keith tends to downplay whatever hurts he has.

“No, wait -!”

But he hears the telltale click, and Keith goes silent.

“Dammit, you stupid mullet! I’ll keep my end open, so just holler if something goes wrong, alright?”

But there’s no response, and an icy tendril wraps around his chest, but he ignores it and goes to work on the circuit panel. The sooner he fixes up Red, the better.

* * *

Keith comes back online as Lance hums his way through another stunningly-executed rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”.

“Walk, walk fashion baby, work it – ”

“What the actual quiznak.”

“Keith! You’re alright!”

“Yea, it took a bit, but I’m out now. Nothing broken, but I think I twisted my ankle.”

“Oh, ouch, man, that sucks.”

Keith hums. “Yea, guess so. Well, it’s time to get to work.”

The icy tendril that had coiled up in his chest loosens a bit, and he can breathe a little easier now.

“Alright, mullet, let’s see who fixes their lion faster.”

“You’re on, cargo pilot, you’re on.”

 

 **iii.** **rising**

It’s nearly two sunrises later that Lance makes his first breakthrough.

“Aha!”

Keith, who’s apparently just waking up, makes a sort of sleepy grunt.

“Beat that, Mullet! I fixed Red’s transistors, and now I just need to get the memristors replaced.”

“Ugh, shut up Lance, just let me sleep for five more minutes.”

Lance laughs quietly as he hears Keith’s breathing even out again. He snores a little in his sleep. _It’s quite cute, once you get around the anger and the spikes_ , he thinks.

Then his brain shorts, just a little bit. _Cute?! Did he just call Keith Kogane cute?_

He spends the rest of the time listening to Keith’s quiet, soft snores and absentmindedly fiddling with the electronics.

“Shit, ow! Quiznak!”

Keith’s snoring abruptly stops. “What is going on? Lance, are you alright?”

“Goddamn, yea, I just – poked the wrong wire. God that hurt.”

“Oh, and for a second I thought it was an actual issue.”

“Okay, screw you, mister so-emo-I-don’t-feel-pain.”

“Hey!”

Their friendly banter continues onwards in the same vein for a while, and Lance finds himself truly enjoying it for the first time in a while. With Shiro’s disappearance, Keith’s become more and more short-tempered by the day, and their usual arguments had taken on a sharper, more cutting edge.

It’s nice that they’re back to their usual dynamic, and Lance realizes he’s missed this. Missed this camaraderie, missed _Keith_.

And oh, he’s well and truly fucked, isn’t he.

* * *

The sun is high in the sky by the time Keith announces his triumph over one of the shorted circuits in Black. Lance is munching away at what looks like solidified green goo (definitely not appetizing, but hey he’s hungry, and this is better than starving), and when he hears Keith’s excited exclamation, he grins.

“Finally, you’ve caught on. But will the student become the master?”

“I think your abilities have made you, well, arrogant.”

Lance is delighted. “Did you just quote Star Wars back at me, Kogane? Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

Keith makes embarrassed noises, and Lance thinks it’s the cutest thing he’s heard in oh, about four hours.

“Shut up, Lance.”

“Face it, Kogane, you’re getting soft. Soon you’ll become a retired emo and shed your black outfits and angst, and what will we have then?”

“Oh my god, Lance, just go back to your memristors already, geez.”

A few minutes pass in silence.

“You didn’t deny it,” Lance points out.

“Hmm?”

“That you’re an emo. Do you listen to My Chemical Romance? Dashboard Confessional?”

“Okay, that’s it, I’m turning this off.”

“But Keeeeiiith…”

“That, or you shut up and stop.”

“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll stop and go back to fixing these stupid circuits.”

A few more minutes.

Then: “My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confessional are so old anyways, it’s Fall Out Boy and Mayday Parade now,” Keith mutters.

“So you _are_ an emo!” Lance announces.

Keith tells him to shut up, once more, and Lance can’t help but grin.

* * *

It’s two more days before Lance sees the end to his grueling stint as an electrician. He tells this to Keith.

“Thank god, I was getting tired of hearing you hum along to “Bad Romance” so many times.”

“Hey, Lady Gaga is _classic_. How’re things on your end?”

“Coming along.”

They work in silence for a bit longer.

“And uh, thanks. We do make a good team, I guess. Even with your bad taste in music.”

“Hush, you emo.”

They both laugh, and the ensuing silence is comfortable.

“Hey, uh, Lance, when we get back, I uh. I’d like to tell you something?”

Lance’s face heats up, and his voice jumps about an octave when he speaks next.

“I – yea,” he clears his throat to get it to stop cracking, “yea, I have something too –”

There’s a strange crackle, and Lance pauses for a second.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Hello? Who’s there?” Keith asks.

“-ions, hailing – Red – locked on to your –” It’s crackly, but it’s undeniably their resident genius technologist.

“Pidge? Pidge, is that you?”

“-ance? Lance, you’re alright! We’ve locked onto your location, just hang on, we’re on our way. Is Keith with you?”

Keith’s voice comes through the other end. “Yeah, I’m here!”

“He’s stuck on one of the moons, we’ve been able to communicate over the last few days. How much longer until you guys get here?” Lance asks.

“Two vargas, give or take a few doboshes,” Allura says.

“Alright. I’m pretty sure I can get Red up and running then, I’ll fly up and check on Black if I can and let you guys know how things go.”

“Sounds good. Stay safe, Lance.”

And as Lance settles himself in for the final repairs, he feels relief for the first time in days.

 

**iv. truth**

It takes Lance longer than he’d like to get Red up and running once again. It’s near the two varga mark when he finally gets into the cockpit.

“Alright, here goes.”

“Good luck, Lance,” Keith says in his ear. Lance smiles.

“What’s your ETA, Castle?” Lance asks.

“We’re three or four doboshes out. Meet you at the moon? We’ll send Hunk over with Yellow just in case Black isn’t functional.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Lance and Keith say in unison. “See you up there.”

* * *

It’s good, flying Red again. He ascends through the atmosphere with little issue, and as Red points out where the Black Lion’s location is, he angles Red’s head towards the small moon on the far side of the planet. He sees the Castle approach in the distance, and a small yellow speck flies out.

“I see you, Hunk.”

“Yeah, I see you too. Any word from Keith yet on how Black’s repairs are coming along?”

“Not much.”

When they get closer, he realizes something’s wrong.

“Hey, uh, guys, why is Black still dark? Keith? Keith, can you hear me?”

There’s no response, and Lance starts to feel worry creep up his throat.

Yellow lands first, and Hunk is out of his lion and into Black in a matter of seconds. Lance lands Red gently besides Yellow and slips out, only to hear Hunk’s gasp.

“Hunk? Hunk, what’s wrong? Keith?”

“Don’t – don’t come here, Lance!”

“What’s wrong, Hunk? We –”

And Lance steps through into the cockpit, and the illusion is shattered, because Hunk is gently trying to extricate Keith from underneath the pile of debris his lower body is buried in. Keith’s neck is at an unnatural angle, and Hunk is silently crying.

Lance blinks. His mind seems like it’s moving in slow motion, like a fly through a vat of liquid honey, because there’s no way that’s Keith. Keith was talking with him just a few hours ago. Keith is – has to be – alive. Dimly, he hears voices in his ear.

He has to be. That’s the only explanation here.

Wordlessly he moves over to help Hunk with the debris, and once the body is clear, he moves to load it into Red. Hunk gives him nervous looks, but tethers Black to Yellow and follows behind.

He spends the entirety of the short ride staring straight ahead while Red moves on autopilot towards his hangar, because all he can think of is Keith’s voice in his ear, his little quiet snores, and the body.

Because there is no – no way that’s Keith.

They get to the Castle. Lance climbs out of Red while holding the body. Someone tries to take the body from him, but he shakes them off violently. He walks towards the healing pods and puts the body into one.

It beeps at him. He doesn’t understand Altean. There’s some red box flashing in the center, but he can’t read that either.

Where’s Keith?

His ears are roaring, but someone – Allura? – is pulling him away from the pod.

He fights.

“-ance. Lance! Please, listen to me. The pod, it doesn’t take dead bodies.”

He turns in slow motion to face her, and he sees her blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

 _Dead_.

It’s like a knell in his mind. The universe should be ending.

 _Dead_.

Where – what?

 _Dead_.

Where’s Keith?

 

**v. memento mori**

He comes to in the mindscape of the Red Lion. He’s only been here once before, when he was angry and desperate and Keith wasn’t paying attention and there was a strange energy cannon, and oh. Keith.

Where’s Keith?

He doesn’t realize he’s said this out loud until he hears a sigh.

“Keith?”

“Hello, Lance.”

And as he watches, particles of light coalesce together, and there’s Keith. Paler, but his violet eyes are as dark and brooding as the day they met.

“Where are you? The others – they say they found your body, but that’s not you. It can’t be you, because you’re here and you were the voice in my ear.”

A look of anguish twists those delicate features.

“Lance, I –”

Something is coiling in his chest and he can’t breathe, because Keith is here Keith isn’t dead Keith is right. Here.

But as Keith moves to touch him, his hand goes right through.

_Oh._

“You. You’re not here, aren’t you.”

It’s not a question, but Keith nods anyways.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m not.”

“When – how – what?”

“When we were hit by that energy blast, you were stuck and couldn’t move so I shoved you out of the worst of it and well. When I opened my eyes again, I was here, in the Red Lion’s mindscape. I think –” and here Keith pauses. Takes a deep breath. Then continues, “I think that I became Red, after that blast hit me. It separated me from my body, which was dying, and now I’m here.”

It all makes sense. A terrible, horrible sense.

“But what’ll happen to you? I mean, your body is still out there, waiting for you.”

Keith’s violet eyes are sad.

“I’m dead, Lance. I can’t go back.”

“No. No, no, Keith, no. You can’t do this to me, you can’t.”

“Lance, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Lance can feel himself fading, and he screams.

“No! You can’t do this, no, Keith, please, please, please. _I love you_!”

And instead of looking surprised, Keith just. Smiles. He watches as Lance fades away entirely, and then he too, begins to fade.

And as Lance wakes with tears on his cheeks, he swears he feels a ghostly mouth pressed to his right cheek, and a breath whispers near his ear:

“I’m sorry, Lance. It’s time to let me go.”

.

.

.

_Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops_

_And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him_

_For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,_

_Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,_

_He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot._

_No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear._

_A four-foot box, a foot for every year._

 - from “Mid-Term Break”, Seamus Heaney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: "memristors" are an actual concept. They're an imaginary fourth circuit element (resistors, capacitors, and inductors are the three commonly heard of ones) that relate electrical charge to flux - that is, they can remember what the previous charge through them was and adjust their resistance accordingly (because of course the magical robot lions would be powered by imaginary circuitry).
> 
> Come geek with me (or cry with me, because I am ugly crying over what I wrote) on Discord: @jmoon #0444.


	2. dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are fixed, but not before they get worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry pt 2 ft langst. so much langst  
> im so sorry

**i. dream**

_“I hold it true, whate’er befall;_

_I feel it, when I sorrow most;_

_‘Tis better to have loved and lost_

_Than never to have loved at all.”_

\- “In Memoriam”, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

He wakes with the taste of salt in his mouth and a name on the tip of his tongue and a vast, aching feeling of emptiness echoing inside his chest. For a brief moment, he wonders if he could just curl up and stop breathing, stop thinking, stop being.

Because it has been twenty-four days since then, but every night he falls asleep to the image of Keith’s pale face against a backdrop of foreign galaxies, and every morning he wakes to silence and the icy coldness that has nestled into his chest.

When he was young, he loved seeing the stars. They were distant and few, out on the light-polluted beach near his grandmother’s house in Varadero, but they were there. There was something about the cold beauty of the stars that beckoned him in, called to him and lured him to the Garrison, and after that, Blue and Voltron and them.

What he didn’t know back then – what he knows now, in the too-long silences and the averted gazes and the darkened bulbs of Black’s eyes – was how cold space was. There is always too much time to think and not enough to do, and he needs to do things or he’ll keep thinking about a boy with a personality the color of fire and eyes the color of summer storms.

He scrubs his face with cold water and goes to get breakfast.

They’re supposed to make planet-fall some time later today, in a few hours. Something about meeting more aliens who’d like to join the fight against the Galra.

“It’s our first step forward as Voltron since Keith,” Allura says. There’s a twitch to her mouth when she says his name, almost as if she couldn’t.

Lance just shrugs.

The others ask questions about technology and customs and traditions, and he closes his eyes and lets their inane chatter wash over him. It’s calming, hearing them, but at the same time not. Finally, they fall silent and move to perform their duties of the day.

“Lance, a word?”

“Of course, Princess.” He puts his dishes in the sink as the rest of them traipse away, leaving only him and Allura in the kitchen.

“Are you doing alright? You’ve been more quiet and withdrawn lately, and you look…”

_Tired._

The word hangs in the air between the two of them, and Lance can only call up a wry smile. It’s not meant to be an expression of anything but grief, and they both know.

“How do you deal with it?” he asks, because some days the iciness threatens to freeze his very limbs, weighing them down until he doesn’t ever want to get up again.

Her eyes grow sad, like they do every time someone asks her about Altea or her father.

“Sometimes, you just have to sit and breathe and remember, until you remember why you’re here. Why you keep fighting.”

She makes it sound so _easy_ , and for a moment, Lance is irrationally, unbearably angry.

“Well, that’s easy. I got eaten by a magical space lion and was forced to fight in a war to save the universe against dictator aliens that I didn’t even know about or want to join! And now they’ve killed Keith,” and saying his name causes the icy tendrils to clench a little tighter, “and you’re telling me that all I have to do is just remember why I had to leave Earth, why Keith had to die? That’s rich, coming from someone who just slept through the destruction of her planet.”

The moment those words leave his mouth, he breathes in sharply, but the hurt and raw anger he sees in Allura’s eyes marks the damage as done already.

“You have no right to say what you just did. None. And I am going to leave now, because whatever I say will only be more hurtful.”

And with those words, she leaves.

The silence after the door closes is deafening, and he’s left biting his lip as he stares down at a sinkful of soapy water and undone dishes, trying not to cry.

 

**ii. astronomical dawn**

_“And then there are the planets with life, constructed like intricate jeweled clockwork, containing a multitude of self-referential literary devices that echo and re-echo without end.”_

\- “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species”, Ken Liu

 

They land with no issues. The Tull-Toks are a peaceful people, interested more in reading information and meaning from the nature around them than in preparing for or waging war against the expanding grasp of the Galra. The only reason their planet has been safe for all these millenia is because of the unique radiation-proof atmosphere, and because of the fact that the only reason the Tull-Toks ever venture off-planet is to access more knowledge.

Allura tells them that a Tull-Tok is only content when they are reading. Some Tull-Toks will even venture into black holes, because only there will they be able to read the true tragedy and glory of the universe – but of course, none ever return from that journey.

It is beautiful and poetic and sad, and Lance simply doesn’t have any more energy in him to care.

The others give him and Allura sidelong looks as they head down to the surface in a pod (Voltron was deemed unnecessary – the planet has enough protection to shield them from the Galra as is and bringing Voltron would just draw unnecessary attention to them), but tactfully keep their mouths shut.

When they land, they are greeted by a crowd of curious Tull-Toks. Curious Tull-Toks have an unbearable urge to read all the knowledge they see. And so, when they are confronted with two Alteans and three humans, they scramble all over them in an effort to read everything.

Watching them, Lance is reminded of finals week at the Garrison; Pidge and Hunk scrambling madly over notes and equations and derivations, while he laughs at their antics.

For a moment, the ice recedes.

Then one particularly curious Tull-Tok leans in close (at least, he assumes so, because the Tull-Tok are ethereal in that they are literal bundles of energy that are only half-visible to their human eyes – though Allura assures Pidge and Hunk that her eyes, being Altean, can see more of the electromagnetic spectrum and the Tull-Toks are breathtakingly awesome), takes what he assumes is a long sniff, and warbles something.

His communicator, Altean and thankfully up-to-date on Tull-Tok-ese, dutifully translates.

“This one smells of loss and suffering, and recent too. May I take a taste?”

He waves his arms wildly in an effort to move the Tull-Tok away from those memories of all things, but one sharp look from Allura (along with the pangs of guilt from today morning’s conversation) settles him in place.

 _Sorry,_ she mouths at him. _For Voltron_.

He nods stiffly.

What he isn’t prepared for is what “a taste” means. He feels a gentle touch _to his mind,_ and amidst shouts of alarm from his fellow Paladins and Allura, he falls through endless darkness until he lands, once more, in Red’s cockpit, looking out over a very familiar view.

There is the desert planet populated by friendly little cat-like creatures ( _the Calurnians_ , the not-his-mind touch supplies). There are the Galra warships, showing up and turning the tide of the battle against them. There goes the new cannon ( _it’s not new,_ the voice whispers _, it’s a sleeker version of their old Zaiforge cannons_ ), and the blast hits him and Red straight on. There’s screaming, jumbled shouts in his comm, and falling.

He blacks out from the high g-forces, and when he wakes again Red has landed.

He takes stock of his surroundings. The panels are up and something is beeping, which means Red is working again, but something is wrong – there’s no atmospheric reading showing up, and Red can’t seem to fly. Something about a circuit and a bunch of blown transistors and memristors, but he’s no engineering expert and he doesn’t know where the tools to fix Red are stashed.

As he moves to check his injuries, he is hit by a terrible, familiar sense of _déjà vu._ There’s something that he can’t quite put his finger on, but he can’t remember what it was.

So he tinkers with Red (and there’s something wrong with the circuitry and some blown transistors and memristors), and he tries to contact the others, but to no avail. He spends three sunrises alone, when, on the fourth day, as he’s lounging lazily in his seat, he hears a crackle of static.

“Hello?”

The static is slowly but surely clearing, and Lance begins to make out a voice.

“- one there? – ith, pilot – Black.”

“You’ve gotta speak up, I can’t hear you well.”

There’s a pause. “-argo pilot?”

Again, he gets the strange feeling that he’s lived this before. But how could he have?

He banters with Keith, spends time fixing Red, and wakes to the realization that maybe, just maybe, he likes Keith a little more than he thought.

Then the Castle finds them, and he finds Black, and Black is dark, and he remembers.

He remembers, and it hurts, because he’s just lived through the same thing again, and nothing has changed.

_Is this what the Tull-Tok meant by “a taste”?_

He screams, loud and long, because Keith has just died in front of him again.

But when he goes to sleep (“The pod, it doesn’t take dead bodies,” Allura’s voice reminds him), he’s not in the mindscape of the Red Lion. When he closes his eyes, blessed darkness taking over, the weight of Keith still heavy in his arms, he falls.

“Did you want to change things?” something asks.

He doesn’t know where he is. It’s all dark around him, and it feels like he’s falling endlessly.

“What the fuck is going on?” he screams.

“Do you want to change things?” it asks, once more.

He remembers the foreign touch on his mind, and he wonders.

He feels a distinct sense of amusement from somewhere around him.

“Do you want to change things?”

He thinks about it, about a boy with hair like a raven’s wing and eyes like the night sky, about Hunk’s expression when they found the body, about Allura’s tears. He thinks about the ice around his heart, pulling down his limbs.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

And he lands, once more, in Red’s cockpit, looking out over a very familiar view.

 

**iii. alpenglow**

_“Maybe you can’t die here, but you will not be living. You will merely exist. There is no ‘why’ in a world that would be perfect in itself. Nor is surviving in the Woods anything like you imagine. You’ll be trapped for all eternity.’_

_‘I am not so sure,’ I say. ‘Nor can you be. A little by little, I will recall things. People and places from our former world, different qualities of light, different songs. And as I remember, I may find the key to my own creation, and to its undoing.’"_

_\- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,_ Haruki Murakami

 

_3 -_

The first thing he tries to change is dodging out of the way of the cannon blast.

He sees it coming and moves, and it passes by Red harmlessly.

It hits the unprotected side of a Galra warship behind him, and all the paladins cheer as it begins to list and fall away, spiraling down towards the nearby moon.

But the next blast (and who knew that this cannon could charge so quickly) hits Black, and immediately it goes dark. Lance screams as he watches Black fall directly into the path of a purple beam, and an orange blossom of flame lights up the darkness of space.

He throws himself into the path of the next blast.

 

_4, 5 -_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

The next loop is over even faster – he pushes Black out of the way, but Yellow gets hit instead and Black and Keith go down trying to avenge Hunk.

The third loop is promising, at first. He dodges, none of the others get hit, and all seems well. Then the Galra warship hit by the upgraded Zaiforge cannon slants, and instead of falling towards the nearest moon, gets drawn into the gravity well of the planet itself.

Lance cannot live knowing that he traded thousands of innocent lives for Keith’s (and he knows Keith won’t stand for that either), and so he lifts up the warship, propelling it away from the planet.

The next thing he knows is this: he falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

It takes him twenty-seven loops to realize that no, he can’t save Keith that way.

 

_29, 30, 31 -_

Then he tries to stay awake during Red’s crash landing.

The first time he tries this, he passes out.

The second time he tries this (the thirtieth loop), he passes out, but lower in the fall.

The third time he tries this (the thirty-first loop), he bites his tongue to stay awake, only to come to with a mouth full of blood. He bleeds out in this one.

 

_48 -_

The sixteenth time he tries this, he holds his head at just the right angle and allows the g-forces to almost knock him unconscious. His head is cushioned by the seat, and though he feels like he’s being pressed to his chair by a giant, he stays awake for the impact.

When the dust settles, he scrambles in search of the tools he’ll need to fix Red’s circuitry.

He forgets, in the chaos, to keep his helmet on.

It begins with a dull headache he can’t quite shake off, then random spurts of dizziness and weakness in his fingers. He writes this off to exhaustion over the various time loops, and continues to solder the next transistor in. Then he realizes he doesn’t know which circuit he’s working on (they all are starting to blur together), and he passes out.

 

_49 -_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

He snarls, long and low and full of frustration, and gets back to work. There is no way he’s giving up on Keith.

 

_96 -_

He’s finally accounted for the cannon, and for the fall, and for the time it takes to fix Red’s circuitry (six hours, once he finds the right panel).

He gets Red up and running after the explosions have faded out of the sky, but long before Keith’s voice comes crackling over the radio (three planet-days earlier, in fact). He takes off for the moon where he found Black.

It’s too late. By the time he pries open Black’s cockpit, his body is already cool to the touch.

Lance weeps, for all that he’s lost and all that he has yet to lose.

 

_97 -_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

He wonders absently if there’s a stash of alcohol anywhere on Red.

He’s tired, and it shows. His reactions are just a little slower, his time in fixing the circuit just that much longer (six hours and twelve minutes, instead of six hours).

No matter, because when he reaches Black again it’s to the sight of darkened yellow orbs and a body that is cooling to the touch.

 

_98, 99 -_

He falls, and he wakes to the same scene.

He’s tired. He wonders why he keeps doing this, when all it results in is the same thing, every time. Keith, his body cooling to the touch as he sits in Black’s cockpit, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Keith and Black, dying together in an orange blossom of flame. Keith, dying, dying, dying.

Never once living. And wasn’t that the goal? Didn’t he want to save Keith?

Saving Keith? Ha. He can’t even save himself.

In the next loop, he turns Red off. Listens to the battle around him, the sounds of his comrades fighting for their lives.

He sits and he breathes and he weeps, and he lets the purple light take him.

 

_100 -_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

His eyes fall on his bayard. He wonders, in some horribly abstract way, if he can end it this way. If Keith could be saved by his sacrifice.

He was wrong. He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

He has so much time. All the time in the world, condensed down into a single day, played on repeat over and over again.

He realizes he forgot to ask the Tull-Tok, back when he first agreed.

“Will this change anything?”

There is no response.

 

**iv. sunrise**

_“It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he."_

_\- The Stranger_ , Albert Camus (trans. Matthew Ward)

 

_154 -_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips. He has long since lost track of the loops.

This time he tries to make himself fix the circuit faster. He’s gotten it down to an hour and thirteen minutes.

He gets to Black just in time to see the light fade from Keith’s eyes, and to hear his last words.

He’s still not in time.

 

_179 –_

He falls, and he lands once more in Red’s cockpit, the vista of a familiar battle spread out beneath his fingertips.

He has to be faster, better, more observant.

Forty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds.

He’s just in time to see Black plummet down to the ground, and this time he hears the sick crack.

 

_204 –_

He’s figured most of it out. He gets hit, falls, crash lands, fixes the circuitry in less than twenty-six minutes and thirty-two seconds, sees Black crash, pries open the cockpit, gently extracts Keith, loads him into Red, and gets him to the Castle.

Except, when he reaches the Castle, the shields are up, and Coran isn’t responding to his comm.

 

_214 –_

He realizes he needs to tell Coran to keep an opening for them in the barrier in case if they get hurt, right when he drops into Red’s cockpit.

Next loop. Next loop, he’ll save Keith.

_215 –_

The barrier is down, Keith is alive and badly hurt and in Red, and they land. Coran is there to help him carry Keith to a healing pod.

They put him into once, and Lance watches with relief as it begins to cloud over.

Just under two hours later, he watches with a mixture of resignation and despair as the pod beeps a single note. He doesn’t need to understand Altean to read the flashing red sign across the panel.

 

_219 –_

As it turns out, the healing pods are not programmed to help heal Galran wounds – even half-Galran ones.

Lance spends that loop, and the next fifteen, learning how to reprogram a pod. He tunes out the screams of his fellow paladins, but he knows that if he ever dreams again he will hear them forever. If he can ever sleep again.

 

_254 –_

Keith, of all people, hears his muttering over the comms.

“Lance, what are you doing? We need your help!”

This is the first time he’s heard Keith’s normal voice – he’s not in pain and he’s not dying, and Lance just shuts down.

When he comes back to himself, he realizes the battle is over, and he’s floating in a sea of debris. None of the others are there.

 

_294 –_

In his desperation, he talks to Coran.

“Oh, a time loop? That sounds like the time King Alfor and I accidentally angered a nest of Blorlaps!”

“Is this really the time, Coran? I need help!”

In the end, he’s still too late.

He doesn’t ask Coran again.

 

_324 –_

He asks Allura instead. She brushes it off as temporary insanity due to the ion cannon.

 

_358 –_

He’s finally gotten through to her. Now all he has to do is get Keith to the Castle, and she’ll take care of the rest.

He doesn’t get Keith to the Castle. He forgot about the warship.

 

_364 –_

He gets Keith to the Castle and into the pod Allura has set up. He sits by the pod and just listens to the steady, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.

He falls asleep.

 

**v. day**

_“Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone._ "

 _\- The Haunting of Hill House,_ Shirley Jackson

 

He’s in the mindscape of the Red Lion. It’s vast and echoing, and the sky is dark and filled with constellations he doesn’t know.

He wonders if Allura would know.

He keeps walking. The sky in front of him is beginning to lighten. A sliver of light peeks over the horizon.

The sun is rising, and Keith has not appeared.

* * *

He falls, and he lands on the cold floor of the infirmary. He aches all over from a combination of sleeping on the floor and the bruises he collected from the battle and the retrieval of Keith.

Allura’s sitting next to him, running a hand through his hair.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

He nods. She smiles at him, and bursts into tears.

“I’m so sorry, Lance.”

He tries to dredge up those initial feelings of anger that he had towards her, but realizes that there is nothing left.

“I am too.”

And they sit and they listen to the beeping. After a while, Allura gets to her feet.

“Sorry I have to go, but we need to move the Castle.”

“It’s okay. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

“That you will be,” she agrees, and leaves.

He sits on the floor of the infirmary for a long time. The beeping continues.

In the back of his mind, he senses something stirring. A sense of contentment and satisfaction oozes from it.

He thinks that he should know what it is, but he’s so tired. Maybe if he closes his eyes for just a little bit…

 

**vi. midnight sun (epilogue)**

_“… this time I know Henry will come, eventually. I sometimes wonder if this readiness, this expectation, prevents the miracle from happening. But I have no choice. He is coming, and I am here."_

_\- The Time Traveler’s Wife,_ Audrey Niffenegger

 

He falls, and he lands back in his body, which is lying on what looks like a bed of leaves. He doesn't quite know. The flora on this planet is a little bit different.

Next to him stands a Tull-Tok, which has a single digit extended and resting on his forehead.

He feels like he’s traveled a great distance. He feels old and worn out. He doesn’t remember why. The Tull-Tok looks like it’s just had a very good meal – its stomach-region is a little distended, and it gives off an air of what Lance would call “falling into a food coma”.

“Are you awake now?” asks the Tull-Tok. It blinks slowly.

He stretches and yawns. “Yeah, but wow, I could really use another nap right now.”

Keith’s voice comes from just outside the doorway of the hut he’s lying in. “Get up, you lazy cargo pilot, we’re not here to sightsee.”

For some reason, tears spring to his eyes. He hurriedly dashes them away before clambering to his feet (and wow, he feels a killer headache coming on) and walks outside.

“Oh shut up, Mullet-head. Some of us actually need our beauty sleep, alright?”

In front of him stands Keith, with his familiar smirk and crossed arms, with his hair slightly mussed from an earlier encounter with a Tull-Tok and his eyes like summer thunderclouds. As Lance walks out, Keith holds out one hand expectantly.

He rolls his eyes at Keith’s antics and reaches forward to take it.

“Let’s go, starboy.”

.

.

_Along that hidden path my guide and I_

_Started out to return to the bright world._

_And without a thought for any resting-stops,_

 

_We bounded up, he first and I second,_

_Until, through a round opening, I saw_

_Some of the lovely things the heavens hold:_

 

_From there we came out to see once more the stars._

-  _The Inferno_ , Canto 34, Dante

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some explanation of names:
> 
> Calurnians – from Marvel, warlike cat aliens that fight for sport
> 
> Tull-Toks – from “On the Habits of Bookmaking Species” by Ken Liu, they are basically balls of energy that latch on to spacecraft and they traverse the universe in search of books to read

**Author's Note:**

> Discord: jmoon (#0444)  
> Twitter: @jmoon78825891


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